7.21b slightly altered the metagame in the highest skill bracket, returning some heroes to the game, while nerfing the most successful carries. Overall the carry meta is in a decently healthy place right now, with a good variety of heroes.

For a moment in 7.20 it looked like the historical utility offlaners are here to stay—heroes like Beastmaster, Centaur Warrunner, Dark Seer and Tidehunter were very popular, creating space and initiating teamfights for their teammates, while building auras and utility items. This nostalgic period didn’t last long and once again we are seeing the return of greediness in the hard lane.

Supports frequently go unnoticed in Dota. It takes a lot of practice and dedication to make flashy, effective plays. We’ll dive into what support heroes work well in the current meta, with some strong enough to be useful regardless of other picks.

Chaos Knight was among the biggest winners of the new patch. The hero currently wins almost 54% of his 5k+ pub games and is a popular pick among professional players. What are the reasons for his sudden resurgence?

The new patch introduced a lot of balance changes, some of which fundamentally altered gameplay. Naturally, it resulted in a significant meta shift and while from the qualifier stats it looks like the professional scene is taking its time to adjust, the pubs are already embracing it.

The Chongqing Major was a strange tournament. There were almost no technical issues and it completely disproved any notions that the Chinese crowd is only interested in the games of the Chinese teams, with a full venue during the Grand Finals between Virtus.Pro and Team Secret. It was a well produced and a well received tournament, but at the same time it was also one of the least diverse tournaments in the last several years.

With the release of the 7.20 patch the meta of the game got significantly faster. Lower armor on structures and the increased efficiency of armor-reduction effects led to games often snowballing out of control. Coupled with changes to the deny mechanic, where you no longer get bonus experience, it led to many teams successfully experimenting with trilanes once again.

This week, Virtus.Pro qualified for TI9 with a guaranteed top 6 finish at the Chongqing Major, DreamHack announced the invited teams to the Stockholm Major qualifiers, and Southeast Asian team, Tigers, shuffles their roster.

Tusk has been one of the most popular heroes in the professional scene. His versatility and consistency make him one of the priority picks in the current meta. Despite his popularity and relative success at the highest level of competition, his presence in pubs isn’t as dominant. Today we would like to discuss what exactly makes Tusk strong in the competitive matches and how pub players can incorporate lessons from the professional scene in their own matches.

The first step of the new DPC Minor and Major cycle is over and it is time to look at how the professional players adjusted to the new patch. 82 heroes picked and 87 heroes contested is a pretty decent result, considering a total of 47 matches were played. It is hard to say that “everything can work” from this statistic alone, but the meta seems to be diverse enough to allow for a great Major starting next week.

EHOME trounced the competition during their championship run at the Bucharest Minor, Valve purges 17,000 smurf accounts and is set to release Trusted Matchmaking for Dota, and True Sight releases today at 11:00AM PST.

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